Insights on the Cybercrime Market

BANGALORE: The cybercrime black market is growing by leaps and bounds and has developed into a multibillion dollar industry in spite of the recent takedowns, reveals a study conducted by RAND Corporation. The study provides such other insights into dark world of cybercrime black market.

Emerging Trends: The easy availability of online tutorials, point and click interfaces and information on where to buy fake credit cards makes it easy for anyone to get into this business. There is an increasing importance on encryption and keeping identities secret. The preferred mode of transactions is through digital currencies such as-Bitcoin, Alertpay, Pecunix. Organized cybercrime attacks have become very cheap-anybody can order a Distributed Denial of Service attack through botnets for as little as $50 for a period of 24hours. Among all the countries, China is most vulnerable to cyber attack followed by the U.S. Last year alone, cybercrime attacks cost the world $390 billion.

Similarities with other Markets: This market is well structured, highly organized and is governed by predefined rules. A group can grow to become as big as 80,000 in man power and can have global footprints. The market is organized into buyers, sellers and third parties. The third party acts as facilitator and verifies the products and services on offer and works towards keeping identities secret.. It is hierarchical with the administrators at the top followed by the subject matter experts. The people at the top earn the most and get the highest share of the profit. It needs connections to move up the ladder. They constantly innovate and are always on the lookout for ne w opportunities. As in other markets, here too rippers are banned or ousted from the market.

Recommendations: The governments must consider the option of setting up fake credit card shops, forums and sites to increase the number of arrests or at least to malign the reputation and dependability of the cybercrime market. They should decide if the banks should be allowed to buy back their costumers credit card information. They should also check if encryption be made mandatory at point of sale terminals and should also explore the option of hacking back to recover the stolen data.